Fedora Core 2 x86 Release Notes

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Introduction

The Fedora Project is an openly-developed project designed by Red Hat, open for
general participation, led by a meritocracy, and following a set of
project objectives. The results from this project include Fedora Core, a
complete, general-purpose operating system built exclusively from open
source software.

Note

Fedora Core is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc.

For more information, refer to the Fedora Project overview later in this
document.

The following topics related to Fedora Core 2 are covered in
this document:

Hardware Requirements

Note

The compatibility/availability of other hardware components (such as
video and network cards) may be required for specific installation modes
and/or post-installation usage.

CPU Requirements

This section lists the CPU specifications required by Fedora Core
2.

Note

The following CPU specifications
are stated in terms of Intel processors. Other processors (notably,
offerings from AMD, Cyrix, and VIA) that are compatible with and
equivalent to the following Intel processors may also be used with
Fedora Core.

Minimum: Pentium-class

Fedora Core 2 is
optimized for Pentium PRO (and later) CPUs, but also supports
Pentium-class CPUs. This approach has been taken because
Pentium-class optimizations actually result in reduced performance
for non-Pentium-class processors.

Recommended for text-mode: 200
MHz Pentium-class or better

Recommended for graphical: 400
MHz Pentium II or better

Hard Disk Space Requirements

This section lists the disk space required to install Fedora Core
2.

Note

The disk space requirements listed below represent the disk space
taken up by Fedora Core 2 after the
installation is complete. However, additional disk space is required
during the installation to support the installation environment. This
additional disk space corresponds to the size of
/Fedora/base/stage2.img (on CD-ROM 1) plus the
size of the files in /var/lib/rpm on the
installed system.

In practical terms, this means that as little as an additional
90MB can be required for a minimal installation, while as much as an
additional 175MB can be required for an "everything"
installation.

Also, keep in mind that additional space will be required for any
user data, and at least 5% free space should be maintained for proper
system operation.

Custom Installation (Minimal):
620MB

Server: 1.1GB

Personal Desktop: 2.3GB

Workstation: 3.0GB

Custom Installation
(Everything): 6.9GB

Memory Requirements

This section lists the memory required to install Fedora Core
2.

Minimum for text-mode:
64MB

Minimum for graphical:
192MB

Recommended for graphical:
256MB

Overview of This Release

The following list includes brief summaries of some of the more
significant aspects of Fedora Core 2:

Fedora Core 2 includes an implementation of SELinux. SELinux
represents a major shift in the way users, programs, and processes
interact. By default, SELinux is installed — but disabled —
in this release.

Note

You can install Fedora Core 2 with SELinux enabled by
entering selinux at the Boot: prompt when booting
the Fedora Core installation program.

Should you decide to enable SELinux, it is
strongly recommended that you read the
Fedora Core SELinux FAQ:

Even if you are familiar with SELinux technology, refer to the FAQ
for the latest information from the Fedora Core SELinux developers.

In this release, the XFree86™
X11 implementation has been replaced with the X.org Foundation's new
official X11R6.7.0 X Window System release. This release is a merger
of the previous official X11R6 release, XFree86 4.4.0rc2, and
additionally includes a number of updates to Xrender, Xft, Xcursor,
fontconfig libraries, and other significant improvements. Refer to
the X.org X11R6.7.0 release notes for more information:

Subversion 1.0 is now included in Fedora Core; the Subversion version
control system is designed to be a replacement for CVS and features
truly atomic commits, versioning of files, directories and metadata,
along with most current features of CVS.

Installation-Related Notes

This section outlines those issues that are related to Anaconda (the
Fedora Core installation program) and installing Fedora Core 2 in
general.

Anaconda Notes

For systems capable of booting from a USB device, Fedora Core
2 includes an image file designed for use with USB pen
drives (or other bootable media with a capacity larger than a
diskette drive). The file is diskboot.img, and
is present in the images/ directory on CD-ROM
1. Use the dd command to write the image.

Note

The ability to use this image file with a USB pen drive
depends on the ability of your system's BIOS to boot from a USB
device.

The Fedora Core installation program has the ability to test the
integrity of the installation media. It works with the CD, DVD, hard
drive ISO, and NFS ISO installation methods. Red Hat recommends that
you test all installation media before starting the installation
process, and before reporting any installation-related bugs (many of
the bugs reported are actually due to improperly-burned CDs). To use
this test, type linux mediacheck at the
boot: prompt.

Memory testing may be performed prior to installing Fedora Core by
entering memtest86 at the boot:
prompt. This causes the Memtest86 standalone memory testing
software to run. Memtest86 memory testing continues until the
Esc key is pressed.

NOTE: You must boot from CD-ROM 1 (or a rescue CD-ROM) in order
to use this feature.

Fedora Core 2 supports graphical FTP and HTTP
installations. However, due to the necessity of containing the
installer image in RAM, only systems with more than 128MB of RAM (or
systems booted from CD-ROM 1, which contains the installer image)
can use the graphical installer. Systems with less than 128MB of
memory will continue to use the text-based installer.

Hard drive installations are now graphical by default. There is
no memory penalty, as parted now uses a kernel
interface that makes it possible to keep partitions mounted on a
device while other partitions are being modified.

The firewall configuration screen in the Fedora Core installation
program has been simplified. The previous
"High", "Medium", and
"No firewall" settings have been replaced by a
more straightforward on/off-style control. In addition, the default
firewall configuration is now stateful, making it more secure. The
new design also makes it possible for users of NIS authentication,
NFS, and DNS to deploy a firewall with no additional customization
required (although customization by specifying port and protocol is
still possible).

NOTE: This change also applies to the Security
Level Configuration Tool
(redhat-config-securitylevel).

Installation via VNC is now supported. To initiate a VNC-based
installation, pass vnc as a boot-time option. If
necessary, a password can be set by adding
"vncpassword=<password>"
to the boot-time options. The VNC display will be
"<host>:1",
where <host> is
the hostname or IP address of the system installing Fedora Core.

It is also possible for the Fedora Core installation program to
initiate a connection to a listening VNC client. This is done by
using the vncconnect boot-time option:

linux vnc
vncconnect=<client>[:<port>]

(Where
<client> is the
hostname or IP address of the system running the listening VNC
client, and
<port> is an
optional port specification that may be specified if the VNC client
is not listening on port 5500, which is the default port for this
type of connection). The following examples show the how the
boot-time option is specified for standard and non-standard
ports:

linux vnc
vncconnect=pigdog.example.com

linux vnc
vncconnect=pigdog.example.com:27910

The system that is to run the listening VNC client must then
launch the appropriate software to run the VNC client in its
listening mode. For the VNC client supplied with Fedora Core
2, the following command is sufficient:

vncviewer -listen

In addition, a new kickstart directive has been added to support
VNC-based installations:

vnc [--password
<password>] [--connect
<host>[:<port>]]

(Where --password
<password> is an
optional parameter for specifying a VNC password, and
[--connect
<host>[:<port>]]
is an optional parameter for specifying the host (and optionally,
port) of a system running a listening VNC client.)

NOTE: If you specify any of the VNC-related boot-time options,
they will override the corresponding options present in the
kickstart file.

Installation-Related Issues

Attempts to install Fedora Core
2 on ASUS®
motherboards in the P4P800 series may not proceed past the
"Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the
kernel." message, making installation impossible.
No workaround is available at this time. For more information,
monitor bug 121819:

Certain hardware configurations (particularly those with LCD
displays) may experience problems while starting the Fedora Core
installation program. In these instances, restart the installation,
and add the "nofb" option to the boot command
line.

NOTE: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean graphical installations
started using the "nofb" option will start in
English, and then switch to the appropriate language once the
graphical phase of the installation process begins.

Some Sony VAIO® notebook systems may experience
problems installing Fedora Core from CD-ROM. If this happens, restart
the installation process and add the following option to the boot
command line:

pci=off
ide1=0x180,0x386

This option allows the
installation to proceed normally; any devices not detected due to
the use of this option will be configured the first time Fedora Core is
booted.

Serial mice are known to be inoperative during installation.
However, there are indications that serial mice work properly in X
after the installation has completed. Refer to bug 119474 for more
information:

Fedora Core 2 running as
a guest operating system under VMware Workstation 4.5.1 is known to
be problematic unless you disable virtual dynamic shared object
support with the following kernel boot parameter:

vdso=0

Performing an installation with SELinux enabled causes
GNOME-related files to be created in the /root/
directory with the wrong security context. This will prevent a
graphical login by the root account. The workaround is to login (as
root) via the console and run the following command:

setfiles /etc/security/selinux/file_contexts /root

After issuing this command, graphical logins as root will work
as expected.

Systems with older network cards may not bring network
interfaces up at boot time. Refer to bug 119965 for more
information:

Note

Running this command is recommended for all
installations.

There have been issues observed
when upgrading Red Hat Linux 7.<x>, 8.0, 9,
and Fedora Core 1 systems running Ximian GNOME. The issue is caused by
version overlap between the official Red Hat Linux RPMs (or the ones from the
Fedora Project) and the Ximian RPMs. This configuration is not supported.
You have several choices in resolving this issue:

1) You may remove Ximian GNOME
from your system prior to upgrading to Fedora Core.

2) You may upgrade your system,
and then immediately reinstall Ximian GNOME.

3) You may upgrade your system,
and then immediately remove all remaining Ximian RPMs, replacing
them with the corresponding Fedora Core RPMs.

You must
resolve the version overlap using one of the above choices. Failure
to do so will result in an unstable GNOME configuration.

Package-Specific Notes

The following sections contain information regarding packages that
have undergone significant changes for Fedora Core 2. For easier
access, they are organized using the same groups used in Anaconda.

Core

This section contains the most elemental components of Fedora Core,
including the kernel.

glibc

A higher-quality implementation of POSIX timer support (which
now includes support for CLOCK_MONOTONIC) is now available. This
implementation uses support built into the 2.6 kernel.

In addition, POSIX message queue support, a new feature, has
been added to Fedora Core 2.

To speed login when NIS is used, it is now possible to request
the use of the netid.byname map instead of
the groups.byname map for providing
group-related information to NIS clients. This map is
traditionally not used for this purpose, but in most
configurations contains the necessary information, and is
generated by default on recent Linux and Solaris™ NIS servers.

To enable this feature, find the following line in
/etc/default/nss:

# NETID_AUTHORITATIVE=TRUE

Next, use a text editor to remove the leading '#' character,
saving your changes when done.

Note

No cross-checks of the netid.byname map
are done by either the NIS server or client. Therefore, the
responsibility of ensuring that
netid.byname contains appropriate
information rests with the system administrator.

It is also possible to improve NIS performance by using the
services.byservicename map. If this map
exists and has been built properly, its use can be enabled by the
following setting in /etc/default/nss:

SERVICES_AUTHORITATIVE=TRUE

The services.byservicename map must
contain both names of services and aliases as keys, both without
protocol specified and with protocol. Recently-updated Fedora Core
and Solaris NIS servers provide properly-built
services.byservicename maps.

Native POSIX Thread Library
(NPTL) support is unavailable in architectures below i686. This
includes VIA, AMD K6, and i586 Pentium processors. This is known
to be problematic for certain applications that rely on NPTL db4,
such as subversion.

kernel

The Fedora Core 2 i686
kernel uses the "4GB/4GB memory split," where both kernel and user
space each have 4GB of virtual address space available. This
allows the use of larger applications, and is especially useful
for Java and databases. In addition, this feature provides
increased kernel space, which can be used to take advantage of
system configurations with large amounts of RAM.

Support for I2O has been extensively
revamped for Fedora Core 2.

Fedora Core 2 should theoretically be usable with
I2O RAID controllers; however, installation
and upgrade require manual intervention. Unfortunately, we were
unable to complete I2O support in Anaconda
prior to the release of Fedora Core 2.

The i2o_proc module must be manually
loaded during disk probing, so that Disk Druid is able to find the
I2O block devices. Refer to the
I2O project home page (listed below) for
procedures regarding this and other upgrade/installation
issues.

Note

The dpt_i2o driver previously used to
support many SCSI RAID controllers under 2.4 kernels is no
longer supported. However, the new generic
I2O layer supports most of these
controllers. In addition, it is now possible to use
I2O on 64-bit architectures.

Note also that device names have changed. The
dpt_i2o driver previously used
/dev/sd?? device names, while the new
i2o_block driver uses
/dev/i2o/hd?? device names.

This site includes a list of tested controllers,
raidutils RPMs compatible with the old
dpt_i2o driver and the new
I2O layer (for managing Adaptec RAID
controllers), and information specific to
I2O on Fedora Core.

The 2.6 kernel provides a new and much-improved mechanism
(known as SG_IO) for applications that must
send raw commands to storage devices. This includes applications
for burning CDs or for extracting data from audio CDs. SG_IO also
eliminates the need for ide-scsi emulation, where boot-time
parameters such as hdd=ide-scsi were required
to support ATAPI CD burners.

Applications packaged as part of Fedora Core 2 have
been adjusted to take advantage of SG_IO. For example, to burn a
CD using cdrecord, the old-style command was
similar to this:

cdrecord --dev=0,0,0 <iso-file>

With SG_IO, the command would be similar to this:

cdrecord --dev=<device><iso-file>

Where
<device>
could be any valid IDE (/dev/hdc) or SCSI/USB
(/dev/scd0) device file name.

Graphics

This section includes packages that help you manipulate and scan
images.

gimp

The gimp-perl package has been removed
from Fedora Core 2 because GIMP was updated to 2.0 and the
Perl bindings were neither ready nor part of the main package
anymore.

Language Support

This section includes information related to the support of various
languages under Fedora Core.

iiimf

The default Input Method (IM) for Chinese (Simplified and
Traditional), Japanese, and Korean has been changed to IIIMF
— the Internet/Intranet Input Method Framework. IIIMF is
supported as a native GTK2 IM module, and also through XIM using
the httx client. IIIMF supports the use of
multiple Language Engines (LEs) at the same time; using the GNOME
Input Method Language Engine Tool (GIMLET — an applet) it is
possible to switch between LEs of different languages inside GTK2
applications.

IIIMF currently defaults to using
Ctrl-Space
for toggling the input method on and off (Emacs users can use
Ctrl-@
instead of
Ctrl-Space
to set the mark.)

To switch between IIIMF and the legacy XIM input methods, use
the im-switch command. Enter the following
command for more information:

im-switch -h

Mail Server

This section contains information related to the mail transport
agents included with Fedora Core.

sendmail

By default, the Sendmail mail transport agent (MTA) does not
accept network connections from any host other than the local
computer. If you want to configure Sendmail as a server for other
clients, you must edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
and change the DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also
listen on network devices (or comment out this option entirely using
the dnl comment delimiter). You must then
regenerate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf by running the
following command (as root):

make -C /etc/mail

Note that you must have the sendmail-cf
package installed for this to work.

Sound and Video

This section contains information related to multimedia
applications.

k3b

Past users of the CD/DVD burning application
k3b may notice that the program
k3bsetup is missing. This is because
k3bsetup is not necessary under Fedora Core
2.

X Window System

This section contains information related to the X Window System
implementation provided with Fedora Core.

xorg-x11

Users new to the X.org X11 implementation should take note of
a few differences between it and the XFree86.org X11
implementation which shipped in previous Red Hat operating systems.
In particular, the names of some files have changed, including the
following:

When configuring or troubleshooting your X server
configuration, be sure that you are using the correct
files.

There has been some confusion regarding font-related issues
under the X Window System in recent versions of Fedora Core (and
versions of Red Hat Linux before it.) At the present time, there are two
font subsystems, each with different characteristics:

- The original (15+ year old) subsystem is referred to as the
"core X font subsystem". Fonts rendered by this subsystem are not
anti-aliased, are handled by the X server, and have names
like:

-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1

The newer font subsystem is known as "fontconfig", and allows
applications direct access to the font files. Fontconfig is often
used along with the "Xft" library, which allows applications to
render fontconfig fonts to the screen with antialiasing.
Fontconfig uses more human-friendly names like:

Luxi Sans-10

Over time, fontconfig/Xft will replace the core X font
subsystem. At the present time, applications using the Qt 3 or
GTK 2 toolkits (which would include KDE and GNOME applications)
use the fontconfig and Xft font subsystem; most everything else
uses the core X fonts.

In the future, Fedora Core may support only fontconfig/Xft in
place of the XFS font server as the default local font access
method.

NOTE: An exception to the font subsystem usage outlined above
is OpenOffice.org (which uses its own font rendering
technology).

If you wish to add new fonts to your Fedora Core 2
system, you must be aware that the steps necessary depend on which
font subsystem is to use the new fonts. For the core X font
subsystem, you must:

3. Update the font information by issuing the following
commands (note that, due to formatting restrictions, the following
commands may appear on more than one line; in use, each command
should be entered on a single line):

4. If you had to create
/usr/share/fonts/local/, you must then add it
to the X font server (xfs) path:

chkfontpath --add
/usr/share/fonts/local/

Adding new fonts to the fontconfig font subsystem is more
straightforward; the new font file only needs to be copied into
the /usr/share/fonts/ directory (individual
users can modify their personal font configuration by copying the
font file into the ~/.fonts/
directory).

After the new font has been copied, use
fc-cache to update the font information
cache:

fc-cache
<directory>

(Where
<directory>
would be either the /usr/share/fonts/ or
~/.fonts/ directories.)

Individual users may also install fonts graphically, by
browsing fonts:/// in
Nautilus, and dragging the new font
files there.

NOTE: If the font filename ends with
".gz", it has been compressed with
gzip, and must be decompressed (with the
gunzip command) before the fontconfig font
subsystem can use the font.

Due to the transition to the new font system based on
fontconfig/Xft, GTK+ 1.2 applications are not affected by any
changes made via the Font Preferences dialog.
For these applications, a font can be configured by adding the
following lines to the file
~/.gtkrc.mine:

style "user-font" {

fontset =
"<font-specification>"

}

widget_class "*" style "user-font"

(Where
<font-specification>
represents a font specification in the style used by traditional X
applications, such as
"-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*".)

Miscellaneous Notes

This section contains information related to packages that do not
fit in any of the proceeding categories.

lvm2

This section contains information related to the
lvm2 package.

The full set of LVM2 commands is now installed in
/usr/sbin/. In boot environments where
/usr/ is not available, it is necessary to
prefix each command with /sbin/lvm.static
(/sbin/lvm.static vgchange -ay, for
example).

In environments where /usr/ is available,
it is no longer necessary to prefix each command with
lvm (/usr/sbin/lvm vgchange
-ay becomes /usr/sbin/vgchange -ay,
for example).

The new LVM2 commands (such as /usr/sbin/vgchange
-ay and /sbin/lvm.static vgchange -ay)
detect if you are running a 2.4 kernel, and transparently invoke the
old LVM1 commands if appropriate. The LVM1 commands have been
renamed to end with ".lvm1" (for example,
/sbin/vgchange.lvm1 -ay).

Note

LVM1 commands work only with 2.4 kernels. It is not
possible to use LVM1 commands while running a 2.6 kernel.

Refer to /usr/share/doc/lvm2*/WHATS_NEW for
more information on LVM2.

Packages Added/Removed/Deprecated

This section contains lists of packages that fit into the following
categories:

Packages that have been added to Fedora Core 2

Packages that have been removed from Fedora Core 2

Packages that have been deprecated, and may be removed from a
future release of Fedora Core

Note

To reduce the length of the following
lists,source packages, and not
binary packages are listed.

Packages Added

The following packages have been added to Fedora Core
2:

alsa-lib — Libraries for Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
(ALSA)

alsa-utils — Command-line utilities for ALSA

ant — Platform-independent build tool for Java
applications

automake17 — Automake 1.7 compatibility

bcel — Java class file manipulation

checkpolicy — SELinux policy compiler

commons-beanutils — Jakarta Commons Beanutils

commons-collections — Jakarta Commons Collections

commons-dbcp — Jakarta Commons DBCP

commons-digester — Jakarta Commons Digester

commons-fileupload — Jakarta Commons Fileupload

commons-logging — Jakarta Commons Logging

commons-modeler — Jakarta Commons Modeler

commons-pool — Jakarta Commons Pool

cup-v10k — LALR parser generator

cyrus-imapd — Cyrus IMAP implementation

dbh — Disk based hash library

dev86 — A real-mode x86 assembler and linker

device-mapper — Device mapper library

distcache — Distributed SSL session cache

exim — The exim mail transport agent

expect — Split out from tcltk

flac — An encoder/decoder for the Free Lossless Audio
Codec

fonts-bengali — Fonts for the display of the Bengali
script

gcc34 — GNU Compiler Collection version 3.4

gnome-keyring — A framework for managing user passwords
and other secrets

An Overview of the Fedora Project

The goal of the Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a
complete, general-purpose operating system exclusively from open source
software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will
produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year, with a
public release schedule. The Red Hat engineering team will continue to
participate in building Fedora Core and will invite and encourage more
outside participation than was possible in the past. By using this more
open process, we hope to provide an operating system more in line with the
ideals of free software and more appealing to the open source
community.

To subscribe to any of these lists, send an email with the word
"subscribe" in the subject to
<listname>-request
(where
<listname>
is one of the above list names.)

NOTE: If you have subscribed in the past to rhl-list, rhl-beta-list,
rhl-devel-list, or rhl-docs-list, your subscriptions have been
retained.

The Fedora Project also includes an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel. IRC is
a real-time, text-based form of communication. With it, you can have
conversations with multiple people in an open channel or chat with someone
privately one-on-one.

To talk with other Fedora Project participants via IRC, access freenode IRC
network. Initially, you can use irc.freenode.net as
the IRC server, although you may decide to select a server that is
geographically closer to you. Refer to the freenode website (http://www.freenode.net/) for more
information. Fedora Project participants frequent the
#fedora channel, while Fedora Project developers can often be
found on the #fedora-devel channel. Some of the
larger projects may have their own channels as well; this information can
be found on the project pages.

NOTE: Red Hat has no control over the Fedora IRC channels or their
content.